If your agency isn’t using PCO, you could be sabotaging your client’s ad campaigns (and your campaigns, too). Here’s a real-world scenario:
You set up highly-targeted ad campaigns via Facebook, Google, or some other popular ad platform for your client. Once visitors arrive on the client’s website, they immediately exit or don’t convert:
It’s a familiar scenario for agencies who set up and manage ads for clients. You can attract traffic to your client’s website just fine — but after that, the results are disappointing. And while ad clicks are important, clients care about real results like conversions, leads, and revenue.
Fortunately, post-click optimization (PCO) exists.
What is agency post-click optimization and why does it matter?
PCO is the process of optimizing everything that happens after a user clicks-through from your ad. It is the second stage in the process so that all leads are sent to marketing automation software:
The goal is to maximize conversions by creating a personalized, consistent, and optimized experience throughout your visitor’s entire journey after clicking your ad. It starts with a personalized post-click landing page, then a thank you page, followed by a thank you email, a drip campaign, and so on until ideally, that person converts into a paying customer.
Why is PCO important for agencies?
PCO is vital for conversion success. If you don’t have a dedicated page that converts visitors from your ads into leads and customers, you’re wasting precious budget. Even if your ad brings in a lot of traffic — traffic is great — but leads and conversions are what really matters. Especially to your clients who invest a lot of money with you to create and manage ads for them. They expect results.
How can you use PCO to optimize your pages?
The post-click stage includes:
- Personalization: A consistent message that matches the ad copy. The personalization component can also relate to the visitor’s traffic source.
- Optimization: Each post-click landing page element (e.g. length of a form or the imagery used) should be A/B tested to identify the best performing design and layout.
- Scalable creation: It should be quick and easy to scale custom post-click landing pages for all of your different ads.
Message match post-ad copy
Message matching occurs when the content on your post-click landing page matches the content in your ad. This provides a consistent message across the entire ad experience. When a visitor clicks through, they’ll be able to tell immediately that the page is relevant to the ad they clicked. One case study on Moz saw conversions increase by over 200%!
One way to do this is by creating a separate post-click landing page for each different ad running. Then, you would change the headlines, imagery, body copy to match or incorporate the keywords used in the target ad. Going this route could mean you spend countless hours creating hundreds of post-click landing page variations to match all of your different ads. A quicker way to do this is with dynamic text replacement, or even better with Global Blocks (discussed later).
Google search ad example #1
post-click landing page:
In this example, text promoting the product’s benefits (“Simple CRM” and “Track Your Leads”) is used in both the original search ad and the post-click landing page.
Google search ad example #2
Google search ad:
post-click landing page:
In this example the solution benefit, “Increase Cash Flow” is carried through from the original ad to the post-click landing page heading.
Dynamic text replacement
Using dynamic text replacement, you can create dynamic post-click landing pages that replace parts of your headings or body text with keywords used in your ad copy.
Before:
Heading: This [Brand] Waterfront Apartment View is Perfect For You.
After:
Heading: This Luxury Waterfront Apartment View is Perfect For You.
For a complete walk-through of how to set up dynamic text, watch this video.
Heatmap analysis
A heatmap is a visual representation of your website visitors’ behavior on a given web page. These are useful in PCO because they allow you to see how visitors interact with your post-click landing page. What area or buttons do visitors click on most often? How far are they scrolling down the page?
There are four main types of heatmaps:
- Click tracking
- Eye tracking
- Scroll maps
- Mouse movement
Each heatmap provides insight into how visitors interact with your pages. And while there are many third-party heatmap tools available, it’s best to find a post-click landing page platform that has heatmap functionality built-in to save on costs and the time needed to set up and integrate multiple software solutions.
With Instapage, if you have multiple post-click landing page variants that you are A/B testing, you can quickly look at a heatmap analysis for each variant to identify what’s working and what should be changed:
Scale post-click landing page production
While designing post-click landing pages has become easier with today’s drag-and-drop builders, managing and creating tens to hundreds of post-click landing pages for all your clients is a difficult task. That’s why it’s important to find a post-click landing page platform that allows you to quickly and easily scale production.
With Instablocks™, you can create and save custom blocks (or sections) for reuse across all of your different post-click landing pages. You can also choose from pre-built templates:
Instablocks enable you to quickly duplicate elements that you use often like testimonials and social proof, a form, or a gallery of images. Then, once you have some blocks you like, save them as a Global Block to update all of your pages with a single click. Go here to see 16 common use cases for Global Blocks and demo videos here.
Your client’s ad campaigns deserve better
By adding PCO to your list of agency services, you will set yourself apart from all other agencies. Never before has there been a solution to combine heatmap insights, scalable creation, and the most robust post-click landing page platform on the market.
See how PCO can transform your struggling ad campaigns into lead generating machines, sign up for an Instapage Enterprise demo here.